There is a week and half left in Build Season, and things are coming along well! Our “Robodex” to help with scouting is finished and ready for viewing robots, and we are now working on a way to compare two robots together. Our Sponsorship Letters to thank our sponsors are coming along very well, and almost finished. The Drive Train was finished today.

All of the field objects were built! All of the metal is cut for the chassis. The electrical component board is finished. A GUI layout and flowchart is in progress for the scouting app. We are working on a shelving project to make more room for parts as well.

Today we focused on prototypes and the chassis layout. The new shooter has been finished and works great! With prototype dimensions we were able to make a rough layout for the chassis. We will use the layout to put the robot in a CAD program. Today we also make a new safety contract that the entire team must understand and sign.

We have broken down basic tasks that need to be done during build season.

Today we continue with prototypes! Electrical plans to make a Prototype Board to make testing prototypes easier. The climber prototype has been started, the shooter has been finished and tested. The shooter doesn’t work too well, so we plan to make a new one. We got paracord to experiment with different rope possibilities.

Today we broke off into small groups to talk about how the bot will work with our strategy. Each group talked about a different part of a robot for collecting fuel, shooting fuel, collecting gears, and climbing. We then got into one large group where we discussed how the design works, and opinions on each design.

Today we finished putting the robot in inventor! We now have dimensions for cutting metal for the chassis. We are almost done with making the field for testing the bot. We are making an electrical component board that can be put on the bot. We are also planning on making an app for a phone to make scouting easier. It will replace having to write notes by hand, making the process faster and easier.

New year, new kickoff: First Steamworks! In this year’s challenge, robots will give an airship flight by fueling a boiler and collecting gears for spinning rotors. You can watch the 2017 FIRST animation here.

This year, we focused hard on dissecting the rules for the challenge- from safety, to how to get points. This helped us come up with a strategy- everything! The most important thing our robot must do is collect and deliver gears. However, we want to challenge ourselves and have the robot do everything possible in the challenge to get the most points.